“The Uncertain Trail” is the third album by Mathias Delplanque under the name of Lena. It was released on CD in 2007 on the french label Sounds Around.

This third album arose from a proposition by Thierry Arnold, head of the label Soudsaround. It gathers a set of unreleased tracks, composed between 2004 and 2006, when Mathias Delplanque went on many different trips abroad and worked in residence, navigating from one extreme to the other (Montréal/Bombay, for instance, but also New York/San Francisco…), with regular stays in Nantes, where he now lives. Mathias Delplanque always came back from these cities, where he actually lived or just transited, with sounds to inject in one of his compositions, thus creating a sort of improbable route between these fantastical cities.

Lena - the name is inspired from a character in Faulkner’s Light In August - has always linked music and roaming. “The Uncertain Trail” is a new wandering, notably more urban (or even sub-urban) than the preceding ones. It takes place along highways, close to ring roads, train stations, transit zones… In this album, Lena experiments many new aspects and ventures on new trails: dark and lame hip-hop, raw dub, crepuscular ambient… Lena invited a few peers: Ghislain Poirier, Hopen or regular Black Sifichi. Darker and more hypnotic than the previous ones, this album follows an uncertain trail, haunted by the ghost of an electronic Tom Waits or a dancing Spectre.

The name of the album comes from a painting by the famous American painter Ed Ruscha, which we are proud to be allowed to reproduce on the cover.

"A universal urban coolness: The diary and travel log of a man who has made the highway his home" (Tokafi.com)